The 60 in 60’s Influence on Evil Monkey’s Reply to YouTube Video Commenters

When, at the end of your life some 50 or maybe 30 or maybe 20 years from now, as the jaws of death are bearing down–in a forest, on a freeway, in a meth lab, on an airplane, from atop a giant pastry, your head stuck in a huge pickle jar, your leg caught in a bear trap, your hand glued to the inside of a music teacher’s thigh, maybe at dusk in the Arabian desert, maybe at dawn in the middle of the Arctic, maybe at midday on a hot back alley with some guy named “Guido Sanduchee” who you bet too much on the capybara races with, maybe even in the middle of a pig sty you didn’t realize was too long to cross without succumbing to the methane, but probably in Jersey in an outhouse…you think back about all of the time you wasted, and the 2:18 you spent on watching the Shriek trailer, the 10 seconds it took to get there in the first place, the 5 seconds it took to make your insightful comment from the perspective of a group mind (apparently), I want you to think of me, and all the time I spent on those 2 minutes and 18 seconds, and how much money and how I’d have to live to about 150 to make it all even…and then, as the darkness comes, finally, in whatever your particular situation turns out to be–I will not hazard a guess–I want you to know that, according to Seneca, you wasted your own darn time.

Sincerely,

Evil Monkey

***

Jeff: So this is what happens when you’re bored? Evil Monkey: No, this is what happens when you’re not writing fiction. Get back to work, fool! Jeff: They won’t find it funny. Evil Monkey: You think you know? You haven’t known all week what they’ll find funny and what they won’t. Jeff: You’re not funny. Evil Monkey: Well, you’re not pretty. Jeff: …Felix Gilman would’ve found a way to make this funnier.

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Comments

Is it possible to waste time in an apparently meaningless universe? Life seems like a positive quantity to me. It’s not winding down, it’s enduring, going further. Thinking like that, Sevenputput just gained 2 minutes and 18 seconds from you Jeff.

Yes, not to mention many ways to contemplate his personal end times. LOL!

I think Ann will tell you I roared with laughter when I saw the Seven’s comment, because, and I didn’t want to talk about it while Shriek promotion was ongoing, the making of the Shriek film was a strange, elongated, annoying process.

About Jeff VanderMeer

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jeff VanderMeer's most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), released in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Foreign rights have sold in 17 countries and the movie rights have been acquired by Paramount Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions. His latest nonfiction books include Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction (Abrams Image). His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Atlantic.com, Vulture.com, and the Los Angeles Times. VanderMeer recently taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference and has lectured at MIT and the Library of Congress. You can contact him at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com. (Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.) More...